Scrubbing my house for a third time today
I think to myself, is there poetry in this?
Frustrated, at the source of this mess,
I wonder if my cleaning spray contains iambic pentameter.

I would not hear it anyway,
I’m tone deaf.

Anger in my soul I consider a place with no:
working, rushing, planning, cleaning
only the source of words to mull over.
Oscar Wilde’s beautiful Dorian Grey comes to mind, all grace,
his horror of a face locked away behind mortar
until the day his corpse mirrored his soul.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers lyric
‘long after the fun of living is done’ comes to mind,
full of plans that year, I was graduating,
back when life excited me,
distinctly, I remember not understanding that line
And was convinced I never would.

I identify with Nathaniel Hawthorn’s Hester Prynne
young mothers unaware of troubles in store
old mothers keep quiet to protect the legacy.
Epiphany:
lines engraved on a women’s face
are the cost of membership.

I wish my days were spent in University with ghosts of:
Edgar Allen Po, Dickinson, Joyce, Keats, Ginsberg and Kerouac.
Learning poetry
in its dissected form
but no time for that
dust mites are calling.

The stigma of trauma; with me since the seventeenth of July –
Magpies carried our cries as far as the Bonsai of Shanghai.
Death used his chest as an armrest; enjoying the hue of purple.
Distressed; the priest came to bless his cardiac arrest –
Medical emergency attended to with modern zest.
The aroma of coma; slowed my composure –
Community predicaments – exposed in the enclosure.
Bedside vigilance attended in increments –
Prayers from the innocent; delivered fearlessness.
Five days later, his eyes finally opened, exposing the fear –
Hugging with happiness; the future unclear.
No memory for four weeks; the doctor said there was no certainty –
Angry delirium; he never understood what was happening to him –
Calling with plans of escaping; my heart broken with whims.
Tests, medications, surgeries left him in oblivion –
A condition so rare; they could not cure – it became wearisome.
Agreed to testing; in aid of helping the next generation.
Devastation; an obligation of stabilization from Sudden Adult Death Syndrome –
A modern miracle fought on the battle fields for one more chance –
To say, I love you.